


Proof

by distractionpie



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Forgetting, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Cuba Alex looks for ways to keep it together, but his options are limited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proof

Charles doesn’t mind any of them spending his money, says he trusts them to be responsible with it. Alex isn’t so sure of that at first, but eventually decides that if Charles does have a problem then Alex can always make the amount up. He takes a taxi (and tries not to think of Darwin) and goes into the city, the smaller towns around the mansion not having the right range of shops for what he wants. He doesn’t want to pay high street prices if he doesn’t have to so he spends most of the day searching and trying to ignore the way the crowds make his skin crawl because his control might be better now but he still doesn’t trust himself without his chest plate – if only bright yellow spandex was appropriate street wear. In the end he finds what he’s looking for in a pawn shop. It’s gathering dust, scuffed and feels like a brick in his hands, but he’s promised that it’ll work and its dirt cheap so he doesn’t feel as bad when the only place he can find which sells film is charging what he’s pretty sure is well over the market rate. On the way back (still not thinking of Darwin, because Shaw’s dead but it hasn’t done anything to ease that particular hurt and he’s starting to think that Charles is right and only time will) he fidgets and fusses and curses the lack of instructions but by the time he’s arrived at the mansion he’s got himself a fully working camera. He just hopes that he’ll be able to convince Hank to develop the pictures in the lab because he’d rather not have to head all the way back into the city to get them developed at the same extortionate cost as he bought the film.

He takes a few shots of the garden to get used to the way the camera works, practising getting the right things in focus and hoping he’s got the exposure set right and isn’t just wasting film.

Sean doesn’t question the camera, pulling faces and grinning and trying to convince Alex that all of the pictures should be of him. Sean is almost normal like this, and Alex gets carried away and takes more pictures that he means too, wanting to capture this easy moment and keep it forever, because this sort of normalcy has been hard to find lately. Charles, Alex photographs discretely and briefly; because while he’s quite sure the older man is aware of his presence as long as Alex doesn’t ask outright to take his picture then Charles will hopefully not pry into his head, deliberately or otherwise, in hopes of finding the reason why. By this point he’s just up half of the film, he wants to take a few shots of Hank (he still hasn’t managed to change his mental default to Beast, it makes the sentences in his head feel clumsy, and with the house half full of geniuses he can’t afford to let himself feel any more unintelligent than he needs to). If he’s got film left at the end he might try and get some pictures of the other three as a group of interacting – Sean at least will apparently be eager.

Hank doesn’t seem very happy to be disturbed in the lab. Alex doesn’t know if this is a new development or some nerdy thing that has always been this way; he’s never really felt any compulsion to visit the Hank’s lab before. Everything is different now. He waits a bit, not hiding his camera but not stating his intentions either, asking Hank stupid questions about the suits and the chest plate and when Hank’s going to get around to building him a new one, because that shit is useful okay, bozo. He’s warier around Hank than he likes, because he saw what Hank did to Erik in the aircraft hangar and while he thought then that Hank didn’t pose any real threat he’s realised now that his housemates aren’t necessarily what they seemed; and Erik was bigger than Alex. He waits until Hank has given him enough incomprehensible scientific answers for Alex’s visit to seem like it really is about the suits, then he lifts his camera up and snaps. It’s only years of practise in quick reactions which allows him to jump away quickly enough to avoid Hank knocking the camera clean out of his hands.

Hank rants about security, and mutant persecution, and the government, and how Alex is stupid and reckless and not as funny as he thinks he is. Alex wonders how funny that’s supposed to be, because he’s pretty sure Hank’s perception of him is wildly different to his own. Hank wants to know what Alex is playing at. Alex doesn’t tell him, because the CIA knows who they are and a few photos aren’t going to make a huge difference one way or another to their weak security.

Hank doesn’t want pictures for the same reasons that Hank’s covered every reflective surface in the lab he’s been able to. Alex could point this out to him, but it’s not like Hank would listen.

Alex rolls his eyes, “Geez, fine Bozo. No need to blow a gasket.” He holds the camera up in front of him and quickly snaps a picture, no doubt one which is out of focus and poorly framed, but it doesn’t matter. He sets the camera down on one of the few worktops not covered by Hank’s experiments and says “Look see, stopping,” as he walks away.

Once he’s arrived on the hall it occurs to him that he could have removed the film and taken the camera back into town and tried to get some money for it, to stop it being a complete waste, but the thought of ripping out the film and spoiling it for good makes him stupidly, irrationally uncomfortable.

Hank’s a dick, he reminds himself, stuffy and condescending even now he’s huge and blue and furry. Trust Hank to take the whole thing too seriously. All of that freaking out about the pictures getting seen would have been avoided if the nerd had just offered to develop them in the house. It’s not like Alex is planning a magazine spread, he just wants some pictures, because pictures are nice. Yes they're evidence, but evidence is only dangerous when it’s in the wrong hands. Maybe photos would have made it easier to deal with shit too, like maybe the mansion wouldn’t seem so empty if they’d be able to capture some of the good moments with Erik and Raven, instead of only ever going over the disaster in Cuba; or to be a reminded that Angel had been a nice girl, who smiled and laughed and danced, even if she did go over to Shaw in the end; to evidence Darwin’s life, to hold something of his that Shaw, that Alex, hadn’t turned to dust back at the CIA facility.

But maybe the others don’t have this problem. Maybe they don’t need proof; don’t need something to hold onto. Charles and Hank are both geniuses, capable of reeling off huge strings off complicated science at the drop of a hat, why would they worry about forgetting? Sean’s different, a little more normal, but he’s still probably smarter than Alex, or at least could be if he applied himself, most people seem to be smarter than Alex, who can’t remember when Erik looked like when he laughed, or what colour it was that Raven’s human hair was, or Darwin’s accent, or what Xavier mansion felt like when it wasn’t permeated by a cloud of despair and betrayal.

Alex can’t remember the day he closed his eyes and realised that he couldn’t picture Scott anymore, or when his father’s name became something he had to search for, not an instinctive recollection. Alex can’t remember a life without the slow burn of plasma coiling under his chest, or when he didn’t check the door was locked at night because the thought of being so exposed makes him sick.

Alex wonders if that was what happened to Raven, who forgot her friends and her home and that she had a brother who loved her and left them on a beach in Cuba, battered and bleeding and alone. Raven had been nice, sweet, even if she was weirdly overprotective of Hank (because maybe she’d needed to be, if he’d been experimenting on himself just to hide his mutation a little easier.) Alex is short tempered and emotionally incompetent and by rights should still be in prison because he destroyed things; what hope is there for him?

Ever since Cuba Charles has watched them less strictly, hasn’t been able to and has probably realised that there's no need with their numbers so reduced, and with Hank hiding in the labs, not wanting anything to do with the others, and Sean constantly training, training, flying, flying, flying away, and Alex mostly been skulking about or resting in his rooms, it’s not like there’s been a risk of any more wild parties (not like the one at the CIA facility, where they’d been high on sugar and solidarity and hope in a way they’ll never be able to reclaim). It’s easier, therefore, to get into the liquor, to grab a bottle in each hand (he doesn’t care about years or vintages or even what it is he’s drinking because they might taste different but the effect is the same) and take them up to his room.

If he can’t remember, then he’s going to do a fucking thorough job of forgetting.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be hurt/comfort, but the comfort never materialised.


End file.
